September Flags

September 9, 2020

Here in September, when green drains from the leaves and flags of orange and red and yellow wave from the trees, I want to turn my eyes away.  So different am I in May, when, like the newly returned robins, eager and hungry for sustenance, I scan the trees’ bare branches for green stipple. I watch the forest floor for green ferns, the rocks for green moss, the garden bed for shy green shoots. But now these dark colors mean that all of that will die.  I feel melancholy. I want to hold onto summer, stubbornly, defiantly.  I want to hold on to the exuberance of peonies and apple blossoms, scarlet phlox and tomato vines.  

On the reef, visible at low tide in front of the house, the semipalmated plovers and sandpipers, the ruddy turnstones and willets who spent the summer on the Artic tundra feeding on swarms of bugs, gather for a quick stopover, a few good meals before they take off for warmer places.  In a week they will all be gone.  I will feel deserted.

My mother’s birthday is September 2, just as the dying season begins.  She died early on the morning of September 4, nine years ago.  She was 92.  She died of pneumonia and a broken heart, two years after, first, my father, then a month later my brother, then a year later my sister, died from metastasized melanoma, the sly demon that raided their brains.  Though she was very ill, I believe she willed herself to stay alive till the news reached her, the day after her birthday, that Adeline, her great granddaughter, made it safely into the world.  She died hours later in a nursing home in Florida. 

Birth and death.  Beginnings and endings.  What of my mother was breathed into Adeline in the crossing of their spirits?

What will live on in this country come this Fall?  We have sixty days until the election.  Will this be a time of new beginning when we finally face the problems of enormous economic disparity and racial injustice? Of climate change and health care?  Will something new and green and promising rise out of the darkness and brokenness of this moment?  Or will it get even darker, even more despotic and violent and hate filled?  Fall frightens me this year.  The death of precious things seems imminent. Everything hangs in the balance.

Bob and I drive to Lubec, the easternmost town in the United States.  It’s only an hour’s ride from here up Rt. 1 and then down to the block long town.  But it’s a ride that transports you far back in time.  We pass a few well-kept homes and cottages with fresh coats of paint and sturdy porches, but most of the built landscape is frayed, askew, on the brink of collapse.  Once the area was a thriving shipping and fishing and farming community.  Now it is poor and yearns backward toward a more prosperous time.   

It is no wonder that the nostalgia of Make America Great again is visible everywhere.  Flocks of blue and red and white Trump and Collins signs crowd the empty spaces along the road.  Trump flags fly from posts and flag poles.  I count only two Biden and Gideon signs the whole way. 

When you reach the beginning of the town, the road ahead is blocked precipitously. Suddenly, the word CANADA rises up on a sign over the road.  STOP signs force you to turn, to deviate.   Just ahead is a customs building, with its gates, lights, guards.  Even with passports, Americans this year are forbidden entry.  Our breath too dangerous.  Our inability to contain the pandemic a stain on our all too prideful souls.  I lower my head as we turn left into town and leave Canada behind.  

Canada.  Even the word feels peaceful in my mouth. Safe. Canada.  Oh Canada!!